New year, same old cardboard flavor.

Do it like Lou Reed now: “And the workaholics sing: doot-de-doot doot-doot-de-doot de-doot doot-de-doot doot-de-doot-de-doot-dooooooo.”

It’s been a busy little month here in my country bunker on the frozen tundra of lower-middle Michigan. Where the potholes are deep and the taxes are steep and skies are not sunny all daaaaayeeee!

Maisy the Shih Tzu turned three-and-a-half this winter. Or, as my wife puts it, 13.

To put that into dog years is beyond heartbreaking. So I won’t. Though, I’m sure some of you Fellini fans are desperately trying to calculate the figure in your head.

I can’t imagine living without my furry little baby … and, so, she will always be 3.5. Hey, I’m already ignoring cancer screenings, the national debt, and that planet-killing asteroid … what’s one more lie?

You bury your worries and I’ll bury mine and we’ll all float down this warm fuzzy river of time on a stream of trans fats and cannabinoid oil and whatever happens to be open latest on GrubHub on Tuesday night or a really early Sunday morning.

Speaking of Sunday Morning, I think there’s a Jelly Roll song for that: right here!

Speaking of birthdays, I’m on the verge of a number so unbelievably obscene, there’s no possible way it’s accurate. And that’s all I have to say about that. [If you read that last line in Forest Gump’s voice, we can be friends.]

Sure, when I look in the mirror, I see a gruesome old mountain man throwback from the golden era of Grunge (circa 1992) … but then again I do tend to exaggerate.

I mean, to be fair, they pay me to exaggerate, so …

Anyway, as my patron saint Charles Bukowski [boo and hiss all ya want, you’ll never have half the soul in his pinky toe] put it: “I went to the bathroom and threw some water on my face; combed my hair—If I could only comb that face.”

As we bid fond adieu to January while simultaneously jerking February across that Red Rover line in hopes of seeing his third cousin Spring stumbling in the dear dark distance, we also near production on my first straight horror feature film.

I say “my” as in a screenplay I have written. The actual filmmaking falls to a director helming the project from sunny Los Angeles. Where else?

We’ve been working on script development since late last Spring and are feeling pretty pretty pretty pretty good about the project.

I can’t wait to see what kind of cool stuff his team’s going to do with this story that’s equal parts The Crazies (original), Shaun of the Dead, and another of my all-time favorite horror films: Species. Or maybe it’s none of those things.

And not just because of Natasha Henstridge. Who will not be appearing in our movie.

Speaking of Natasha, I just re-watched John Carpenter’s: The Ghosts of Mars yesterday for—oh—the twelfth-ish time. I just love JC’s work and try to study it as much as I can.

I’m also rounding the bend, as they say, on a thinky drama piece that’s sort of Charlie Kaufmann meets Nicole Holofcener but set on the outskirts of Downton Abbey.

Also nearing completion of the first clean draft of a super-duper top-secret project I’m writing specifically for A24.

I mean, they don’t know that yet. But, if you’re gonna shoot, ya might as well shoot for the moon.

Someone I used to know, who’s now in the ground, used to say, “Don’t shoot for the moon and miss, because you’ll never recover.”

I just find that too sad for words. So, shoot I will. Who knows, we just might blow the MFer up!

I know, I know, you’re not supposed to write movies for specific actors or prodcos or blah-de-blahs, but A24 has produced and distributed so many of my favorite movies over the last decade-and-change that I just have to try.

How much do I love A24? Well, I eagerly await their new releases. I get giddy as a kid when I see that chromatic logo drawn on the screen. And I find myself searching for movies that are like A24 movies because they just get me as a viewer.

Hell, I was an immediate fan upon seeing my first A24 film—2014’s Enemy with Jake Gyllenhaal. Even with the weird spider ending, which I still don’t get.

Since then, I have loved a fairly large number of their pictures, including:

• Locke (among the very best chamber pieces ever made)
• Obvious Child (How great is Jenny Slate?)
• Tusk
• The Captive
• While We’re Young (Damn you, Baumbach, stop hoggin’ all the dramedies!)
• Ex Machina
• The End of the Tour (dozens of viewings)
• The VVitch (3x)
• Green Room
• The Lobster (5x)
• De Palma (so good)
• Into The Forest
• The Sea of Trees
• The Lovers
• It Comes at Night
• Good Time (the heartbreaking opening alone is worth it)
• The Florida Project (Willem Dafoe!)
• The Killing of A Sacred Deer (just saw this one—holy cow!)
• Lady Bird
• Hereditary (10x)
• Gloria Bell
• The Light House
• Lamb (for some reason I can’t get through this without crying—a lot)
• The Humans (so good)
• White Noise (friggin’ nailed this book adaptation. So good. Love DeLillo!)
• You Hurt My Feelings (love Nicole Holofcener)
• The Iron Claw (haven’t seen it yet but I know I’m gonna love it)

I left a bunch off because they either didn’t do it for me or I haven’t gotten around to seeing them. But that’s still a lot. I don’t know if there’s any other film or distribution companies that have made even close to that many great films in recent years.

Also worth noting, filmmaker Rachel Stander’s production company A Season of Rain had put out a call for an A24-ish quirky dramedy in a competition of sorts facilitated by Unsolicited Scripts … and those results were recently released.

While my project wasn’t chosen for production, I did make the longlist, and received some pretty positive feedback from the script reader.

Reader Comments:

“Featuring distinctive, richly designed characters and an absurdly comedic tone, (this script) shows strong potential. The protagonist’s character arc is compelling, but the protagonist lacks a clear external goal, meaning the internal journey of the character dominates, rather than driving forward subtly in the film’s subtext.”

Of course, I disagree about the external goal, but script readers don’t have time for close reads of the mounds of material foisted upon them so I can forgive that oversight.

Readers scored submissions on a scale of 0-10. My scores:

• Concept: 8
• Plot: 6
• Structure: 7
• Character: 9
• Dialogue: 9
• Market Potential: 7
• Execution: 8
• Overall Impression: 8

I feel like, if you’ve nailed the characters, dialogue, and concept … you pretty much aced the test. But, I get it. These things are difficult to score because reading and writing are so subjective. [And the Universe is actually out to get me!]

I mean, the best movies of last year were, supposedly, Barbie and Oppenheimer and I found them both severely lacking in a number of areas.

But, then, my tastes don’t usually jibe with mainstream entertainment.

Seriously, these movies had real problems that kept me from getting more than 15-20 minutes in. I don’t understand all the hoopla. Maybe superhero fatigue has blinded audiences to clunky tedium.

Bah-zing!

Alright, folks, scrape off your flipflops, tighten the rope holding up your pants, and sharpen those dollar store pencils … cuz ready or not, February’s-a-comin’.

I’m lookin’ at you, groundhog!